In the name of God- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Amen.
For
this sermon and the one next week, I plan to offer a two part series on the
concept of fulfillment. The lectionary provides a great way to do this because
both the New Testament epistle and the Gospel reading are continuous readings
of chapters 12 and 13 of 1 Corinthians and chapter 4 of Luke. We’ll start today
with the Gospel.
Last
Sunday, we had the reading about the transformation of water into wine at the
wedding at Cana of Galilee. In John, that is Jesus’ first act of ministry. In
Luke, this story is his first foray into public ministry. Jesus has just been
baptized and spent 40 days in the wilderness. He then comes to Nazareth, to the
synagogue and he participates in worship. Typically, someone would read a
portion of Scripture and then offer a sermon or an interpretation. If you’re a
lay reader today, you’re probably glad that you’re not expected to offer
commentary after you’ve done the reading. And Jesus is handed a scroll that
seems to be destined for his reading. He reads a portion of Isaiah 61. In a
sense, what he reads is his mission. It is no coincidence that the passage that
Jesus reads is a vision of the Kingdom of God which Jesus came to fulfill.
And
it is worth spending a few brief moments on what Jesus reads. He begins by
saying that he has been anointed for this task. The word anointed in related to
the word “messiah” in Hebrew and “Christ” in Greek, so this reference should
not be overlooked. And in the previous chapters of Luke, we are told that the
Holy Spirit came down from heaven like a dove and filled Jesus. With this in
mind, he begins- “the Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me.”
And then Jesus lists five tasks.
The
first is to bring good news to the poor. We can interpret this literally to
start. Jesus came with a message that focused on the least of these, as opposed
to the establishment. Most people assumed that the Messiah would be a part of
the ruling elite- that they’d find him sitting a places of honor. But instead,
Jesus starts with the poor. Are the poor any more deserving of a messiah than
the rich? Of course not. But the poor were invisible in Jesus’ time, just as
they are today. In all of our discussions as a nation, whether it is on
education, social security, or energy policy, when do we ever consider the
poor? No one lobbies on Capitol Hill for the poor. There is no Super PAC that
advocates for the poor. When we see a poor person on the street corner, what do
we often assume? That they have spent time in jail, are addicted to something,
or have a mental disability?
Poverty
is a systemic problem. Our culture is designed with a series of oppression
systems in place that are designed to keep those in power there. I know the
American Dream is the idea of upward mobility, but for the most part, it is
just that, a dream and not a reality. And the same was true in Jesus’ time. So
he comes and acknowledges those who are invisible, and says that the good news
is for them. How might we share this good news with the poor?
Next,
Jesus says that he will proclaim release to the captives. Now Jesus was
referring to situations of exile, something that doesn’t really translate well
into our cultural context. But consider that in Galilee, the life expectancy
was around 30. But in the hills, in the Roman city of Sepphoris, people were
expected to live well into their 60s. They were not slaves, they had a sense of
freedom, but they were captives. I know that we like to think that slavery
ended with the Emancipation Proclamation, but slavery endures in our lives.
According to an online slavery calculator, I have the equivalent of 58 slaves
that work to sustain my lifestyle. It happens in a variety of ways, through
precious minerals that are mined for use in microchips, to cotton and other
clothing materials, to coffee beans, there are people who work under slave-like
conditions around the world. Jesus came to offer the liberation, he came to
offer them citizenship in the Kingdom of God instead of the kingdoms of man
which is full of captivity. How might we work to release the captives of our
world?
Jesus
then offers recovery of sight to the blind. And while Jesus did give sight to a
blind beggar, he is proclaiming something larger than a few miracle stories.
How many of us are blind to the grace of God which surrounds us? As I said last
week, how many of us see distractions and challenges as just “damned events” in
our lives instead as opportunities for ministries? Jesus comes to reorient our
lives, that we might focus on God and see the things that truly matter. How
might we pay better attention to God’s glory all around out, and then show it
to others?
Jesus
proclaims that the oppressed will go free. Oppression is something that is running
rampant in our culture right now. We are in the midst of a fierce war of words
where we dehumanize those whom we disagree with. Liberals bash conservatives
and conservatives slam liberals. We have several billion dollar so-called news
organizations whose sole purpose is to oppress and belittle the other side. We
like to think of ourselves as being the greatest and most advanced nation on
earth, the one nation that hasn’t succumbed to the atheism of Europe. Though
perhaps we were founded on the ideas of liberty and justice for all, our society
is a far cry from fulfilling that idea.
Women
still only earn 80 cents for every dollar earned by a male worker. Minorities
are incarcerated at rates nearly 10 times higher than whites. Education dropout
rates are much higher among the poor and minorities. Same sex couples are oppressed
by not being offered the same freedom of expression of their loving commitment
to each other that heterosexual couples are allowed, despite the fact that
heterosexual couples get divorced at a rate of nearly 50%, showing that there
isn’t very much sanctity left in the institution. To all those that are oppressed,
Jesus comes offering freedom. How might we unbind them of the stigmas and prejudices
which our culture places on them?
And
lastly, Jesus proclaims the year of the Lord’s favor. In Biblical terms, this
was the Jubilee year. Jubilee was based on the concept that every 50 years, we
need to do a reset. Slaves and land that was occupied as a debt payment were
released, all debts were forgiven. And this Jubilee was ordained by God in
Leviticus. Poverty is not something that should be passed down from generation
to generation. The sins of the father did not need to plague the sons and daughters.
Jesus came pronouncing forgiveness, a fresh start, a new beginning. How might
we let go of our resentments and the things that we hold over each other?
It
is also worth pointing out that Jesus doesn’t fully quote Isaiah 61, as he
leaves out a sentence. Jesus stops mid-sentence to omit “the day of vengeance of
our God.” As Jesus says in John 3:17, the Son was not sent to condemn the
world, but to liberate it. Jesus came to offer these pieces of good news, but
he makes it clear that he did not come to bring vengeance or punishment. Yet our
culture is a vindictive one, one full of lawsuits and an overcrowded prison
system. We focus too much on punitive justice instead of restorative justice.
We clutch onto our resentments as if they are the most valuable things we own.
How might we, like Jesus, put away the need to be vengeful and instead focus on
building the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven?
So
those are the things that Jesus speaks of in his reading. And then he offers a
sermon that is a bit shorter than this one- he says “today this Scripture has
been fulfilled in your hearing.” Jesus did not simply interpret the prophecy of
Isaiah, he boldly proclaims that he has fulfilled it. But in what sense? The
moment Jesus uttered those words, the doors of jails didn’t fly open, the poor
weren’t instantly fed, the blind didn’t all regain their sight. What sort of
fulfillment is this?
What
we see in Jesus is that fulfillment is a process, not a quick fix. Jesus came
to live, die, and be resurrected in God’s process. In the same way that a house
is not built all at once, but one brick at a time, so too the Kingdom of God is
built over time. God is a God of process. Creation was a process. Israel became
a nation through a process of liberation and journey. The very fact that we
live in a universe built on linear time is evidence enough that God cares about
process. There is a wonderful double meaning in the world fulfillment. On the
one hand, Jesus came to fulfill this mission, in the sense of working towards a
goal. But we also use fulfillment to mean a sense of purpose and happiness.
When we are fulfilled, we are living into the core of our identity. And Jesus
is fulfilled by his mission in that sense as well. And in both forms of
fulfillment, it happens as a process.
St. Teresa of Avila realized
that we work in continuing the fulfillment that Jesus began and famously wrote
that “Christ has no body but yours / No hands, no feet on earth but yours / Yours
are the eyes with which he looks / Compassion on this world / Yours are the
feet with which he walks to do good / Yours are the hands, with which he
blesses all the world / Christ has no body now but yours.” That is a good segue
into the reading from 1 Corinthians today about the body.
St. Paul uses an often
used metaphor, that of the body and its various parts. He says that we are all
parts of the body, interconnected and interdependent on one another. In a sense,
he is saying that our fulfillment is dependent upon one another. It really is a
wonderful metaphor. It begs us to consider what part of the body we are. Later
in this passage, St. Paul talks about different gifts, or as the original Greek
puts it “graces,” that we each have. It is an invitation to consider what grace
you bring to the Body of Christ.
What is your fulfillment?
What are you working towards? What fulfills and satisfies you? Every part of
the body is important and needed. I know we all would like to see ourselves as the
brain, or the heart, or maybe the hands, something important. But the fact of
the matter is that every part is important. St. Augustine once said that people
often liked to see themselves as the important part of the body, and no one
ever thought about being the hair on the body. But he reminded his audience
that when we get a bad haircut, we suddenly realize how much value we place on
the hair.
The body also shows us
that it is important to be true to ourselves. If the foot is not content being
a foot and would rather be an eye, then the whole body will stumble. How often
though do we try to be something that we are not?
In the body, it is also
important to remember that there is no belonging without participating in the body.
If you are a part of the body and become dead weight, you will likely fall off
or be cut off. Everyone that is in the Body of Christ has a task, there are no
free rides in discipleship.
And there is humility in
the body. We need each other. The eyes are really important, but if the feet
neck doesn’t allow the head to turn, those eyes aren’t going to see very much.
Independence has become an idol in our culture, and we too easily forget that
our common life depends on each other’s toil. One theologian said that there
are two things which we despise the most in life- the failure of others, and
the success of others. We don’t tolerate failure because we don’t want to be
brought down, we want to achieve our fulfillment. But we also don’t want others
to become too successful, because we tend to view the world as a hierarchy, so
if someone else is the winner, we must be the loser. But the metaphor of the
body invites us to turn leave behind that hierarchy and instead realize that
health is only found when all of the body is being fulfilled.
None of us are Jesus, none
of us are the Messiah. None of us will be the salvation of the world. But as
St. Teresa said, together, we are. Together, we continue in the fulfillment of
Jesus. We are fulfilled when we function as the body, offering our different
graces to fulfill the mission of Jesus. The things that were the fulfillment of
Jesus mission are tall tasks- giving good news to the poor, release to the
captives, sight to the blind, freedom to the oppressed, and Jubilee to the
world. Jesus fulfilled his mission by starting the process of bringing
fulfillment to these causes. Our fulfillment is to be found when come together,
not for our own greater good, but for the greater good of Jesus. And when Jesus’
mission is fulfilled, so too will ours be.
Our readings today invite
us to consider our own place in the body. What gifts do you bring to the table?
Are you fulfilled? If not, we would do well to discern if we are functioning as
the proper body part, or are we trying to be something we are not? Are we
committed to a process that is larger than ourselves? What does the fulfillment
of your mission look like?
But you might ask, “why bother?” I can be very
happy by just focusing on my own life. And if everyone would just do the same,
the world would be a better place. When so much of the body is determined to be
selfish and greedy, why should I pay attention to them? Didn’t God create us to
be individuals, so why should I join up with others? Why should I seek
fulfillment outside of myself? Well, for the answer, we’ll need to turn the
continuation of these readings next week.
